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Young World
Firm as a rock
MADHAV GADGIL
Behold the barnacle,
Whose mouth's in a circle,
Round the clock
It's stuck to a rock!
Panthers stalk their prey, wolves run it down, spiders wait for the quarry to get entrapped. But acorn barnacles are the ultimate sit-and-wait predators, cementing themselves firmly to a rock and waiting for water currents to bring their food to them. Relatives of crabs and shrimp, barnacles are encased in a conical armour with a circular opening on the top. Waving their many legs, they guide water currents towards the mouth, where fine comb-like processes gather the tiny animals that make up their food. They eat well, for they park themselves in the inter-tidal zone, where the water is in perpetual turmoil, swishing back and forth with the rise and fall of the tides, all the time bringing in newer and newer supplies of food.
There is no free lunch, though, and to inhabit this zone, the barnacles have had to give up their mobility. This raises its own problems of finding a mate. Barnacles have a simple solution; all of them are at once males as well as females!
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